The Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) has been granted the High Court’s permission to sell three high-end cars seized from former Real IRA member Nathan Kinsella.
The cars, which have not been declared criminal proceeds in advance of a substantive hearing at the High Court on the matter, were on Wednesday described as being of “very high worth” by Daragh Breen, barrister for Cab.
The three cars – a BMW M2, a BMW M3 and an Audi Q7, which were in Kinsella’s possession – were described as assets “in depreciation” and that they were to be sold with the money to be held in advance of any court hearing, said Breen.
Kinsella was not at the hearing before Judge Liam Kennedy, nor were the notice parties in the case, Richard Buruiani, a director of CRS E-Com – the company being a second notice party.
READ MORE
Breen successfully applied for the vehicles to be sold by a Cab receiver, noting: “Nobody came forward saying ‘I want those vehicles back’.”
The judge granted the application to Breen to appoint the power of sale of the vehicles, which if bought new would cost more than €300,000. He adjourned the matter to next month.
In 2024, Kinsella was due to go to trial over alleged money laundering offences but pleaded guilty to three counts of failing to furnish tax returns.
Kinsella, of Richmond, Newtownpark, Blackrock, Co Dublin, had entered guilty pleas before the Special Criminal Court.
The charges were that whilst having an address at Tasaggart House, Saggart, Co Dublin, he failed without reasonable excuse to deliver to the Revenue Commissioners a full and true return for the purposes of capital acquisitions tax as required by section 46(2) of the Capital Acquisitions Tax Consolidation Act 2003 on or before October 31st, 2018.
He further pleaded guilty to two additional counts of the same offence on or before October 31st, 2019, whilst having an address in Dublin, and on or before October 31st, 2020, whilst having an address at Richmond, Newtownpark, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Kinsella was jailed for one year for failing to pay taxes on €230,000 that he claimed he was “gifted” by a millionaire friend while he was on unemployment benefits.
At the time, Kinsella had 17 previous convictions, including 14 for road traffic offences and two for impeding a prosecution. He was also jailed by the Special Criminal Court in 2014, after a Garda investigation into paramilitary activity at the funeral of dissident republican Alan Ryan.
He had pleaded guilty to membership of an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Óglaigh na hÉireann, on September 13th, 2012, and was sentenced to two years.
Ryan was shot dead outside his home in Clongriffin in Dublin in September 2012. Kinsella was himself shot two months later.
